Joseph Jefferson Farjeon Books in Order

An early Farjeon novel in which friendship turns tangled, uncertain, and increasingly risky. The suspense grows out of divided loyalties and the question of who can really be trusted.

Farjeon's first crime novel plays with identity by setting a master detective against a master criminal who is closer to him than anyone suspects. A stolen ruby and an imposter at the center keep the plot moving.

This early thriller keeps one eye on the criminal underworld and the other on the fear it leaves behind. Farjeon builds suspense from threat, pursuit, and the feeling that trouble is always just offstage.

At Brambles, a shabby but comfortable country house, unexpected visitors keep arriving on impossible errands. What begins as an eccentric gathering turns into a tense country-house mystery.

Back from the Merchant Navy and broke as ever, Ben shelters in an empty London house and finds a corpse. When the body vanishes, he is pulled into a gang's hidden operations at No. 17.

A lighter Farjeon book made up of small incidents, odd turns, and complications that refuse to stay small. Much of the charm is in the wit, the observation, and the quiet surprises.

Farjeon takes the action below ground and turns an everyday setting into a place of pursuit and fear. It is a brisk thriller, with claustrophobia and sudden danger doing much of the work.

Sea air and seaside unease shape this atmospheric mystery. Farjeon uses the coast, with its beauty, isolation, and half-hidden dangers, to keep the story shadowed and tense.

A house at the center of vanishings and unanswered questions gives Farjeon a perfect premise. The mystery deepens as the building itself starts to feel like part of the crime.

Everything here turns on a fixed date that people dread, await, or try to outmaneuver. Farjeon uses the ticking-clock setup to tighten nerves and expose hidden motives.

An enigmatic figure known only as Z stands at the center of this identity-driven mystery. Farjeon leans into secrecy, misdirection, and the danger of not knowing who someone really is.

A more reflective Farjeon tale about lives repeating old patterns and the pull of the past. Suspense grows as one character follows a trail that seems to have been laid down years before.

Hungry and on the run, Ben stows away on a ship bound for Spain, only to learn a wanted murderer is aboard as well. The voyage becomes a lively tangle of thieves, danger, and pure bad luck.

Living in a nearly empty London street, Ben notices knocks, creaks, and stranger goings-on in the house across from him. A message from a beautiful woman draws him into a mystery that feels risky from the start.

Richard Temperley barely notices his bad-tempered fellow passenger until the man is shot through a hotel window after their train reaches foggy London. The case begins with one baffling death and opens onto a deeper mystery.

Ben knows itchy thumbs mean trouble, and he is right when a foggy afternoon leaves him wanted by the police. Hiding in a deserted house, he finds a corpse and lands in far more danger than he bargained for.

Back from Spain, Ben accepts a possible job from a stranger on a cross-Channel boat, only to find the man murdered in a taxi at Southampton. Hunted by both police and shadowy enemies, he has to blunder his way through blackmail and conspiracy.

A costume ball gives everyone a mask, and Farjeon makes full use of the confusion. Beneath the party glitter sits a neat murder puzzle about identity, performance, and deception.

Farjeon builds this puzzle around an older figure whose past clearly matters more than it first appears. Hidden histories and guarded loyalties keep the case moving.

A waterlogged setting and a sense of isolation give this mystery its pull. Farjeon turns the creek and surrounding marshland into part of the danger as secrets begin to surface.

An inn, a bad feeling, and the sense that something is off from the first page, that is the setup here. Farjeon uses the isolated stopover to build a tight, uneasy mystery.

A lonely heath and an old death give this mystery its bleak atmosphere. Farjeon layers secrets, local unease, and fresh danger over a case that refuses to stay buried.

A holiday journey becomes a pressure cooker of suspicion, chance meetings, and danger in transit. Farjeon enjoys the way travel traps strangers together until one of them has reason to panic.

Trying to steady his life, Ben takes work on a ship and ends up wrecked in the Pacific. On an island where he bluffs his way into godlike status, comedy and danger keep colliding.

Ben survives a brush with death on a London bridge and is swept into a case involving a suspicious lady and international conspirators. The story carries him from London to the Scottish mountains, with plenty of chaos on the way.

A snowbound train leaves several passengers stranded on Christmas Eve, and they take refuge in a country house that seems recently occupied but utterly empty. Then murder reaches the house, and the holiday turns eerie fast.

Farjeon turns smuggling into the center of a lively adventure, with hidden cargo, secret dealings, and coastal danger never far away. The fun comes from the mix of criminal intrigue and brisk momentum.

A glamorous country-house weekend turns sinister after an injured stranger becomes the unlucky thirteenth guest. With paintings slashed, secrets surfacing, and murder in the house, Inspector Kendall has to untangle everyone's past.

A petty thief stumbles on a locked room holding seven bodies, and what looks simple quickly turns baffling. Inspector Kendall and a journalist dig through a mass death that could be suicide, murder, or something stranger.

Aunt Sunday steps into a crisis with more nerve and common sense than anyone expects. Farjeon mixes domestic comedy with real danger as she refuses to leave a mystery alone.

A chase-and-romance mystery with a Hitchcockian streak, built around the danger attached to room number six. Farjeon keeps the pace high, mixing pursuit, attraction, and sudden reversals.

When violence strikes more than once, the fear of who comes next becomes part of the puzzle. Farjeon builds tension through mounting panic and a suspect list that keeps widening.

A courtroom-flavoured mystery in which the legal reckoning is only part of the story. Farjeon is just as interested in the buried motives and uneasy testimony that lead up to judgment.

A killing inside a police station turns the safest place in town into the most awkward crime scene. Writing as Anthony Swift, Farjeon uses the setting to make every question feel uncomfortably close to home.

An isolated castle gives Farjeon exactly the kind of setting he loves, eerie, enclosed, and full of secrets. The mood is heavy with suspicion long before the danger becomes clear.

When Rona bolts from trouble, the escape only leads her into deeper uncertainty. Farjeon turns her flight into a brisk suspense story of pursuit, shifting loyalties, and nerves stretched thin.

A closed-circle mystery in which old connections, quiet rivalries, and guarded conversations matter as much as the crime itself. Farjeon uses the social setting to keep everyone under suspicion.

A later manor mystery about returning to old ground and finding that the past has not stayed buried. Farjeon mixes atmosphere, family secrets, and present-day danger inside a country-house setting.

A quirky Farjeon mystery built around the papers, reputation, and private life of Smith Minor. What starts as curiosity soon opens into concealed motives and a more dangerous story.

This is Farjeon in slow-burn mode, where the warning signs arrive before the crime does. Suspicion deepens bit by bit until the earlier unease proves justified.

A missing jewel sets off a brisk Farjeon puzzle full of false leads, hidden motives, and mounting pressure. The pleasure lies in watching a glittering object pull a whole tangle of people into danger.

At Gatleigh Hall, the anniversary of an old death and disappearance keeps dragging Lady Chelwyn back to the past. Farjeon builds a chilly mystery from superstition, memory, and the question of what really happened thirteen years earlier.

A fast-moving mystery driven by travel, motion, and the sense that danger is always arriving a moment too soon. Farjeon turns the journey itself into part of the trap.

Ben is sitting in a park thinking about lucky and unlucky numbers when the stranger beside him is murdered before his eyes. That chance encounter pulls him into one frantic final case centered on No. 19 Billiter Road.

Money is the engine of this later suspense novel, setting greed, secrecy, and pursuit in motion. Farjeon treats cash itself as a dangerous trail, one that leads straight toward fraud, fear, and crime.

A compact later mystery built around two linked crimes and the puzzle of how they fit together. Farjeon keeps the pressure on with deception, shifting suspicion, and a solution that depends on seeing both cases at once.

A later Farjeon mystery in which sudden publicity brings Bob unwanted attention and real danger. Crime, exposure, and quick complications keep the story moving as private trouble becomes public news.

An ordinary umbrella becomes the key to an oddly satisfying little puzzle. Farjeon turns a small object into the starting point for secrecy, deduction, and trouble.